A earlier study in the journal Nature said that in 2005, Wikipedia's scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopedia Britannica.
Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields comparing Wikipedia to professional and peer-reviewedsources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a high standard.
An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003 found that Wikipedia's "vandalism" was fixed so quickly that most of its users would never notice incriminating edits. (If Wikipedia was so on top of its published information in 2003, one would assume in 2013, its ability to repair misinformation is top-notch.)
A 2007 peer-reviewed study by Priedhorsky, et al at the University of Minnesota stated that "42% of damage is repaired almost immediately...Nonetheless, there are still hundreds of millions of damaged views." (Reliability of Wikipedia, 2013)
We Dug More and Here's What We Found:
Wikipedia Founder Discusses Reliability In this article, the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, even cautions students on using Wikipedia for "expert" research. When students email him about failing research papers, he often thinks to himself "For God's sake, you're in college, don't cite the encyclopedia" (Young, 2006).
Great blog post on Wikipedia's credibility! The article also offers ideas on how teachers should broach the taboo subject of Wikipedia:
"...teaching students to look critically at the reliability and credibility of any information source is fundamental to the educational process. Figuring out how to evaluate the encyclopedia, then, is one excellent starting point for teaching students how to assess massive amounts of information they're likely to encounter online both for school work and personal exploration" (Ghajar, 2013).
This article has some awesome sub-headings on using Wikipedia in school and links to additional top-notch sites for educators to visit when they teach students how to use Wikipedia.
Notable Statistics and Evaluations of Wikipedia
We Dug More and Here's What We Found:
Wikipedia Founder Discusses Reliability
In this article, the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, even cautions students on using Wikipedia for "expert" research. When students email him about failing research papers, he often thinks to himself "For God's sake, you're in college, don't cite the encyclopedia" (Young, 2006).
Wikipedia: Friend, Not Foe
This is another great resource for teachers looking for ideas on how to best incorporate Wikipedia into student research projects.
Wikipedia: Credible Research Source or Not?
Great blog post on Wikipedia's credibility! The article also offers ideas on how teachers should broach the taboo subject of Wikipedia:
"...teaching students to look critically at the reliability and credibility of any information source is fundamental to the educational process. Figuring out how to evaluate the encyclopedia, then, is one excellent starting point for teaching students how to assess massive amounts of information they're likely to encounter online both for school work and personal exploration" (Ghajar, 2013).
Teaching Wikipedia as a Research Tool
This article has some awesome sub-headings on using Wikipedia in school and links to additional top-notch sites for educators to visit when they teach students how to use Wikipedia.
References
Ghajar, L. A. (n.d.). Wikipedia: Credible research source or not? [Blog post]. Retrieved from teachinghistory.org website: http://teachinghistory.org/digital-classroom/ask-a-digital-historian/23863
Reliability of Wikipedia. (2013, July 11). Wikipedia. Retrieved July 14, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
Smoot, W. S., & Crovitz, D. (2009, January). Wikipedia: Friend, not foe. Retrieved July 15, 2013, from National Writing Project website: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2920
Wikipedia in the classroom. (2013). Retrieved July 15, 2013, from findingDulcinea website: http://www.findingdulcinea.com/guides/Education/In-The-Classroom/Wikipedia-In-The-Classroom.pg_0.html
Young, J. R. (2006, June 12). Wikipedia founder discourages academic use of his creation [Blog post]. Retrieved from Wired Campus website: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation/2305
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